An institutional effectiveness study of the North Carolina community colleges

Abstract

Regional accrediting agencies and state governments are requiring colleges to evaluate the effectiveness of their institutions. In North Carolina the General Assembly mandated the state Board for Community Colleges to develop a list of critical success factors that measure the effectiveness of the North Carolina system. The purpose of this study was to assess that System's critical success factors as they relate to individual community colleges. This study determined which critical success factors were important and which ones were feasible to use by individual colleges in their institutional effectiveness plans. A Critical Success Factor Questionnaire was used to survey presidents and institutional effectiveness officers (IEOs) of each of the 58 community colleges. Survey data were analyzed using means, standard deviations, Spearman's rank correlation coefficients, and Kendall's coefficient of concordance.